Harvard University Press - PHILOSOPHY

Arguing the Just War in Islam

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

John Kelsay
Jihad, with its many terrifying associations, is a term widely used today, though its meaning is poorly grasped. Kelsay's timely and important work focuses on jihad of the sword in Islamic thought, history, and culture. Making use of original sources, Kelsay delves into the tradition of shari'a--Islamic jurisprudence and reasoning--and shows how it defines jihad as the Islamic analogue of the Western "just" war.
Paperback May 2009

Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Zygmunt Bauman
Bauman urges us to think in new ways about a newly flexible, newly challenging modern world. In an era of routine travel, where most people circulate widely, the inherited beliefs that aid our thinking about the world have become an obstacle. He challenges members of the “knowledge class” to overcome their estrangement from the rest of society.
Paperback May 2009

What Is Good and Why

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Richard Kraut
What is good, how do we know, and how important is it? In this book, one of our most respected analytical philosophers reorients these questions around the notion of what causes human beings to flourish. Observing that we can sensibly address what is good for plants and animals no less than what is good for people, Kraut applies a general principle to the entire living world: what is good for complex organisms consists in the exercise of their natural powers.
Paperback May 2009

Kant and the Limits of Autonomy

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Susan Meld Shell
Autonomy for Kant is not just a synonym for the capacity to choose, whether simple or deliberative. It is what the word literally implies: the imposition of a law on one’s own authority and out of one’s own rational resources. In Kant and the Limits of Autonomy, Shell explores the limits of Kantian autonomy—both the force of its claims and the complications to which they give rise. This book is both a rigorous, philosophically and historically informed study of Kantian autonomy and an extended meditation on the foundation and limits of modern liberalism.
Hardcover April 2009

Looking Away

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Rei Terada
In Looking Away, Rei Terada revisits debates about appearance and reality in order to make a startling claim: that the purpose of such debates is to police feelings of dissatisfaction with the given world. Terada proposes that the connection between dissatisfaction and ephemeral phenomenality reveals a hitherto-unknown alternative to aesthetics that expresses our right to desire something other than experience “as is,” even those parts of it that really cannot be otherwise.
Hardcover April 2009

Minerva's Owl

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jeffrey Abramson
As Hegel famously noted, referring to the Roman goddess Minerva, her owl brought back wisdom only at dusk, when it was too late to shine light on actual politics. Jeffrey Abramson provides a lively and accessible guide for readers discovering the tradition of political thought that dates back to Socrates and Plato, with contemporary examples that illustrate the enduring nature of political dilemmas.
Hardcover April 2009

The Form of Practical Knowledge

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Stephen Engstrom
Immanuel Kant’s claim that the categorical imperative of morality is based in practical reason has long been a source of puzzlement and doubt, even for sympathetic interpreters. In The Form of Practical Knowledge, Stephen Engstrom provides an illuminating new interpretation of the categorical imperative, arguing that we have exaggerated and misconceived Kant’s break with tradition. By developing an account of practical knowledge that situates Kant’s ethics within his broader epistemology, Engstrom’s work deepens and reshapes our understanding of Kantian ethics.
Hardcover April 2009

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

John Rawls
Edited by Thomas Nagel
Introduction by Joshua Cohen
Introduction by Thomas Nagel
Commentary by Robert Merrihew Adams
John Rawls never published anything about his own religious beliefs, but after his death two texts were discovered which shed extraordinary light on the subject. A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. The present volume includes these two texts, together with an Introduction by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel, which discusses their relation to Rawls’s published work, and an essay by Robert Merrihew Adams, which places the thesis in its theological context.
Hardcover March 2009

The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Stephen K. White
In The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen, Stephen K. White contends that Western democracies face novel challenges demanding our reexamination of the role of citizens. White argues that the intense focus in the past three decades on finding general principles of justice for diversity-rich societies needs to be complemented by an exploration of what sort of ethos would be needed to adequately sustain any such principles. Accessible, pithy, and erudite, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen will appeal to a wide audience.
Hardcover March 2009

In Defense of Common Sense

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Lodi Nauta
One of the leading humanists of Quattrocento Italy, Lorenzo Valla (1406–1457) has been praised as a brilliant debunker of medieval scholastic philosophy. In this book Lodi Nauta seeks a more balanced assessment, presenting us with the first comprehensive analysis of the humanist’s attempt at radical reform of Aristotelian scholasticism.
Hardcover March 2009

The Physiology of Truth

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jean-Pierre Changeux
Translated by M. B. DeBevoise
In this wide-ranging book, one of the boldest thinkers in modern neuroscience confronts an ancient philosophical problem: can we know the world as it really is? Drawing on provocative new findings about the psychophysiology of perception and judgment in both human and nonhuman primates, and also on the cultural history of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux makes a powerful case for the reality of scientific progress and argues that it forms the basis for a coherent and universal theory of human rights.
Paperback March 2009

Saving Persuasion

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Bryan Garsten
In Saving Persuasion, Bryan Garsten uncovers the early modern origins of today's suspicious attitude toward rhetoric and seeks to loosen its grip on contemporary political theory. He argues that the artful practice of persuasion ought to be viewed as a crucial part of democratic politics. Against theorists who advocate a rationalized ideal of deliberation aimed at consensus, Garsten argues that a controversial politics of partiality and passion can produce a more engaged and more deliberative kind of democratic discourse.
Paperback March 2009

The Affirmation of Life

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Bernard Reginster
While most recent studies of Nietzsche's works have lost sight of the fundamental question of the meaning of a life characterized by inescapable suffering, Bernard Reginster's book The Affirmation of Life brings it sharply into focus. Reginster identifies overcoming nihilism as a central objective of Nietzsche's philosophical project, and shows how this concern systematically animates all of his main ideas.
Paperback February 2009

Seeing Red

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Nicholas Humphrey
Beginning with the seemingly simple act of seeing red, this brilliantly unsettling essay builds toward an explanation of why consciousness makes compelling evolutionary sense. From sensations that probably began in bodily expression to the evolutionary advantages of a conscious self, Seeing Red tracks the "hard problem" of consciousness to its source and its solution, a solution in which the very hardness of the problem may make all the difference.
Paperback February 2009

The Engaged Intellect

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

John McDowell
This book collects important essays of John McDowell. Each involves a sustained engagement with the views of an important philosopher and is characterized by a modesty that is partly temperamental and partly methodological.
Hardcover January 2009

Having the World in View

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

John McDowell
McDowell builds on his much discussed Mind and World. He argues that the roots of some problems plaguing contemporary philosophy can be found in issues that were first discerned by Kant, and that the best way to get a handle on them is to follow those issues as they are reshaped in the writings of Hegel and Sellars. This new book will be a decisive further step toward healing the divisions in contemporary philosophy.
Hardcover January 2009

The Naked Gaze

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Carlos Rojas
This volume focuses on tropes of visuality and gender to reflect on shifting understandings of the significance of Chineseness, modernity, and Chinese modernity. Through detailed readings of narrative works by eight authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the study identifies three distinct constellations of visual concerns corresponding to the late imperial, mid-twentieth century, and contemporary periods, respectively.
Hardcover January 2009

'Yo!' and 'Lo!': The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Rebecca Kukla
Mark Lance
Much of twentieth-century philosophy was organized around the “linguistic turn,” in which metaphysical and epistemological issues were approached through an analysis of language. This book demonstrates that non-declarative speech acts—including vocative hails (“Yo!”) and calls to shared attention (“Lo!”)—are as fundamental to the possibility and structure of meaningful language as are declaratives.
Hardcover January 2009

Civilization and Enlightenment

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Albert M. Craig
The idea that society progresses through stages of development, from savagery to civilization, arose in eighteenth-century Europe. Craig traces how Fukuzawa Yukichi, deeply influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, “translated” the idea for Japanese society, both enriching and challenging the concept.
Hardcover January 2009

Depth

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Michael Strevens
Strevens proposes a novel theory of scientific explanation and understanding that overhauls and augments the familiar causal approach to explanation. The result is an account of explanation that has especially significant consequences for the higher-level sciences: biology, psychology, economics, and other social sciences.
Hardcover January 2009

Reasonably Vicious

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST

Candace Vogler
Is unethical conduct necessarily irrational? Answering this question requires giving an account of practical reason, of practical good, and of the source or point of wrongdoing. By the time most contemporary philosophers have done the first two, they have lost sight of the third, chalking up bad action to rashness, weakness of will, or ignorance. In this book, Candace Vogler does all three, taking as her guides scholars who contemplated why some people perform evil deeds. In doing so, she sets out to at once engage and redirect contemporary debates about ethics, practical reason, and normativity
Paperback January 2009

Commentaries on Plato, Volume 1, Phaedrus and Ion

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Marsilio Ficino
Edited and translated by Michael J. B. Allen
Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus, was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. This volume contains Ficino’s extended analysis and commentary on the Phaedrus.
Hardcover December 2008

Expression and the Inner

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

David H. Finkelstein
At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. This book contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. What's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind.
Paperback December 2008

Naturalism in Question

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Mario De Caro
Edited by David Macarthur
Today the majority of philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to the "naturalist" credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists--whether human or nonhuman. However, there is a growing skepticism about the adequacy of this complacent orthodoxy. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism not in the name of some form of supernaturalism, but in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism.
Paperback December 2008

Rescuing Justice and Equality

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

G. A. Cohen
In this work of political philosophy, Cohen sets out to rescue the egalitarian thesis that in a society where distributive justice prevails, people’s material prospects are roughly equal. Arguing against the Rawlsian version of a just society, Cohen demonstrates that distributive justice does not tolerate deep inequality.
Hardcover December 2008

Truth and Predication

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Donald Davidson
Edited by Kevin Sharpe
Anchored in classical philosophy, Truth and Predication nonetheless makes telling use of the work of a great number of modern philosophers from Tarski and Dewey to Quine and Rorty. Representing the very best of Western thought, it reopens the most difficult and pressing of ancient philosophical problems, and reveals them to be very much of our day.
Paperback December 2008

Weaving Truth

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

Ann Bergren
"What if truth were a woman?" asked Nietzsche. In ancient Greek thought, truth in language has a special relation to the female by virtue of her pre-eminent art-form--the one Freud believed was even invented by women--weaving. The essays in this book explore the implications of this nexus: language, the female, weaving, and the construction of truth.
Paperback December 2008

Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

W. V. Quine
Edited by Dagfinn Follesdal
Edited by Douglas Boynton Quine
In the twenty years between his last collection of essays and his death in 2000, Quine continued his work and occasionally modified his position on central philosophical issues. This volume collects the main essays from this last, productive period of Quine’s prodigious career.
Hardcover November 2008

Death and Character

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Annette C. Baier
Baier goes beyond her earlier work on David Hume to reflect on a topic that links his philosophy to questions of immediate relevance—in particular, questions about what character is and how it shapes our lives. Her reading radically revises the received interpretation of Hume’s epistemology and, in particular, philosophy of mind.
Hardcover November 2008

Quine in Dialogue

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

W. V. Quine
Edited by Dagfinn Follesdal
Edited by Douglas Boynton Quine
Quine was one of the twentieth century’s great philosophers. This volume begins with a number of interviews Quine gave about his perspectives on twentieth-century logic, science and philosophy, the ideas of others, and philosophy generally. Also included are his most important articles, reviews, and comments on other philosophers, from Rudolf Carnap to P. F. Strawson.
Hardcover November 2008

Providence Lost

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST

Genevieve Lloyd
In our ever more secular times—is providence lost? Perhaps, but as Lloyd makes clear, providence still exerts a powerful influence on our thought and in our lives. This book traces a succession of transformations in the concept of providence through the history of Western philosophy.
Hardcover November 2008

The Consolation of Philosophy

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Boethius
Translated by David R. Slavitt
Introduction by Seth Lerer
Composed while its author was imprisoned, this book remains one of Western literature’s most eloquent meditations on the transitory nature of earthly belongings, and the superiority of things of the mind. Slavitt’s translation captures the energy and passion of the original. And in an introduction intended for the general reader, Seth Lerer places Boethius’s life and achievement in context.
Hardcover September 2008

Loneliness as a Way of Life

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Thomas Dumm
“What does it mean to be lonely?” Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. This book challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way.
Hardcover September 2008

Moral Dimensions

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

T. M. Scanlon
Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Blame, he argues, is a response to the meaning of an action rather than its permissibility. This analysis leads to a novel account of the conditions of moral responsibility and to important conclusions about the ethics of blame.
Hardcover September 2008

Reading Tao Yuanming

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Wendy Swartz
Tao Yuanming (365?–427), although dismissed as a poet following his death, is now considered one of China’s greatest writers. This study of the posthumous reputation of a central figure in Chinese literary history, the mechanisms at work in the reception of his works, and the canonization of Tao himself and of particular readings of his works sheds light on the transformation of literature and culture in premodern China.
Hardcover September 2008

Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

John Rawls
Edited by Samuel Freeman
This last book by the late John Rawls offers readers an account of the liberal political tradition. Constantly revised and refined over three decades, Rawls's lectures on various historical figures reflect his developing and changing views on the history of liberalism and democracy. With its clear and careful analyses of the doctrine of the social contract, utilitarianism, and socialism, this volume has a critical place in the traditions it expounds.
Paperback September 2008

Moral Literacy

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Barbara Herman
Distinguished moral philosopher Herman draws on Kant to address timeless issues in ethical theory as well as issues arising from current moral questions, such as affirmative action and the moral costs of reparative justice. Challenging various Kantian orthodoxies, Herman offers a view of moral competency as a complex achievement, governed by rational norms and dependent on supportive social conditions.
Paperback September 2008

The Veil of Isis

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Pierre Hadot
Translated by Michael Chase
Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Greek thinker Heraclitus supposedly uttered the cryptic words "Phusis kruptesthai philei." How the aphorism, usually translated as "Nature loves to hide," has haunted Western culture ever since is the subject of this engaging study by Pierre Hadot. Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both the ancients and later thinkers such as Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger Hadot traces successive interpretations of Heraclitus' words.
Paperback September 2008

Benjamin's -abilities

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Samuel Weber
In this book, Weber, a leading theorist on literature and media, reveals a new and productive aspect of Benjamin’s thought by focusing the critical suffix “-ability” that Benjamin so tellingly deploys in his work. The result is an illuminating perspective on Benjamin’s thought by way of his language—and one of the most penetrating and comprehensive accounts of Benjamin’s work ever written.
Hardcover June 2008

Life and Action

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Michael Thompson
Any sound practical philosophy must be clear on practical concepts—concepts, in particular, of life, action, and practice. This clarity is Thompson’s aim in his ambitious work. In Thompson’s view, failure to comprehend the structures of thought and judgment expressed in these concepts has disfigured modern moral philosophy, rendering it incapable of addressing the larger questions that should be its focus.
Hardcover June 2008